Index calls for the immediate and unconditional release of author and bookseller, Mahmoud Muna

EDIT (13/02/2025): It has now been reported that Mahmoud and Ahmed Mouna have been released.

Index on Censorship is alarmed by the arrest and ongoing detention of author Mahmoud Muna, owner and bookseller of Jerusalem’s Educational Bookshop. The Educational Bookshop specialises in Arabic and English language books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of Jerusalem. 

Mahmoud and his nephew Ahmad Muna were arrested in the bookshop by undercover Israeli police on the afternoon of Sunday, 9 February 2025. According to their family, dozens of books were confiscated, including all books that had the words “Palestine” or “Palestinian” in the title and that contained images of the Palestinian flag. Mahmoud and Ahmad were arrested on the charge of “inciting and supporting terrorism”, but the charge was reportedly changed to “disturbing the public order” during their interrogation. Ahmad Muna has since been released.

The arrests are part of broader attacks to artistic freedoms within both Israel and the Palestinian territories. Last year, Index covered the blocking of a film screening in Haifa

The Educational Bookshop is a well-known, family-owned chain that has operated for over four decades. It sells a wide collection of books by Palestinian, Israeli and international authors and has a cafe attached to one of the branches that hosts regular literary events. Mahmoud Ahmad is also a writer and active in cultural initiatives across Palestine. In 2022, he published the first Arabic edition of the literary magazine, Granta.

Jemimah Steinfeld, CEO of Index on Censorship, said:

“Book banning has no place in a democracy and these actions don’t even stop there. The two men, Mahmoud Muna and Ahmad Muna, are remarkable by all accounts and should never have been put through this ordeal. Their arrests were another example of how authorities in Israel today are trying to silence the speech of Palestinians and the speech of those who challenge government lines more broadly. Freedom to read is not a luxury that can be given to those whose views you agree with only. It’s an essential part of free speech and it cannot happen if booksellers are unable to carry out their work safely, without fear of reprisal.”

Andrew Franklin, Profile books founder and trustee of Index on Censorship, said:

“Books are a bulwark of freedom. When they are banned, dark things follow.  So for a bookshop to be raided, books seized by the police and the booksellers arrested is shocking and appalling.  It speaks of grim repression and echoes the darkest days of book seizures and book burning. 

“I know Mahmoud well and admire him greatly.  Bookselling is never an easy profession and it’s really challenging under occupation. Mahmoud’s shops are a haven of ideas, stories and imagination in a bleak place. He’s a quiet hero.” 

For press enquiries, contact: Jemimah Steinfeld at [email protected]

A story of forgotten fiction in Vietnam

This article first appeared in Volume 53, Issue 4 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Unsung Heroes: How musicians are raising their voices against oppression. Read more about the issue here. The issue was published on 12 December 2024.

Hoàng Minh Tường has published 17 novels. Seven of these have been banned from re-publication or circulation in Vietnam and two had to be published overseas due to political sensitivities. But the Hanoi-based writer remains upbeat.

“I have been blessed by the heavenly gods,” said the 76-year-old, who used to work as a teacher and journalist. “Many times, I was afraid that I might be imprisoned. Yet I still remain alive.”

The award-winning novelist is currently seeking help to have his best- known novel Thời của Thánh Thần (The Time of the Gods) translated into English. On release in 2008, it was widely regarded as a literary phenomenon yet was immediately recalled and has been banned ever since.

Hoàng, and many other writers I spoke to for this article, agreed that censorship is accepted as part of living and working in Vietnam, where the Communist Party monopolises the publishing industry. The 2012 Publishing Law emphasises the need to “fight against all thoughts and behaviour detrimental to the national interests and contribute to the construction and defence of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam”.

But censorship of fiction is just one part of the country’s free expression quandary. Reporters Without Borders has long categorised Vietnam as being among the worst countries for freedom of the press. The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) is the government agency responsible for state management of press, publishing and printing activities. Writers have to regularly negotiate with censors – and then creatively rise above them or patiently wait for the individuals or agencies in charge to change their minds.

Living with censorship

Hoàng, a Communist Party member, said that The Time of the Gods, written between 2005 and 2008, was a turning point in his literary career, which has spanned three decades.

“After finishing writing the book in 2008, my biggest concern was how to get it published,” he said. “I gave it to three influential friends in three publishing houses, all of whom rejected it because if they published it they would be sent to jail.”

In his banned novel, the characters are multi-faceted. Four brothers navigate different sides of armed conflicts, align with various factions and transcend the simplistic “us versus the enemy” narrative often depicted by the Communist Party.

They endure many of the hidden, historical tribulations of Vietnam – from the Maoist land reform in the 1950s, which seized agricultural land and property owned by landlords for redistribution, to the fall of Saigon in 1975, which ended the Vietnam War and resulted in a mass exodus to escape the victorious communist regime.

“The story of a family is not just the story of a single family but the story of the times, the story of the nation, the story of the two communist and capitalist factions, of the North and South regions of Vietnam and the United States,” said Hoàng. “Perhaps that is why, for the past 15 years, tens of thousands of illegal copies of the book have been printed and people still seek it out to read.”

The ban has created fertile ground for black market circulation, he said, with online and offline pirated copies often full of mistakes. There have never been any official government documents justifying the book ban, nor has there been any explanation for the sensitivities surrounding his works. He asserted that this lack of transparency and accountability was a common occurrence for novelists. “Most of the bans [on my books] were purely by word of mouth,” he said.

For years, Hoàng has communicated with editors at the state-owned Writers’ Association Publishing House (which originally published the book), but to no avail. However, the novel has made its way to global audiences, being translated into Korean, French, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.

His 2014 novel Nguyên khí (Vitality) was originally rejected for publication, and again reasons were not disclosed. The story, revolving around Nguyễn Trãi – a 15th century historical figure who was a loyal and skilled official falsely accused of killing an emperor – symbolises the still strained relationship between single-party rule and patriotic intellectuals. In response, Hoàng revised the narrative of the novel by getting rid of a character – a security agent doubling as a censor and eavesdropper. He retitled the work to The Tragedy of a Great Character, a rebranding that managed to pass through pre-print censorship. Subsequently, in 2019, the book was published and sold out. However, its previous ban was soon recognised, so it didn’t secure a permit for republication.

Learning from history

In his 2022 article Banishing the Poets: Reflections on Free Speech and Literary Censorship in Vietnam, Richard Quang Anh Trần, assistant professor of Southeast Asian studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, concluded that the literary landscape in Vietnam was “as limited as political speech itself”.

“The boundaries of permissible speech, moreover, are ever changing that one may find oneself caught in the crosshairs and on the wrong side at any given moment,” he wrote.

Trần identified two turning points when writers were fooled into believing that the Communist Party had allowed them to challenge the established literary norms of serving the party. The first occurred in the 1950s, during a cultural-political movement in Hanoi, called the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm Affair. A group of party-loyal writers and intellectuals launched two journals, Nhân Văn (Humanity) and Giai Phẩm (Masterpieces). They sought to convince the party of the need for greater artistic and intellectual freedom. Despite their distinguished service to the state, they were condemned in state media and their publications were banned.

The second case came in the late 1980s and early 1990s during Doi Moi (the Renovation Period), a series of economic and political reforms which started in 1986. Vietnam’s market liberalisation breathed new life into war-centric literature, and many writers crafted brilliant post-war novels that challenged prevailing narratives – but their works were censored. This was done through limiting the number of approved copies, recalling and confiscating books from libraries and bookshops, and destroying original drafts.

Censorship was at its worst when the party decided to burn the books of those it regarded as its enemies. Following the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, it embarked on a campaign to eliminate what it classified as decadent and reactionary culture, including many books and magazines published in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).

“South Vietnamese publications were the main target, plus much of popular music, movies and the fine arts,” said Dr Tuấn Hoàng, associate professor of great books at Pepperdine University’s Seaver College in California. “Government workers entered businesses and private residences suspected of having such materials and took away what they could find.”

“Those materials were burned or recycled at factories,” he said. “Citizens were urged to give up banned materials to the government, or to destroy them themselves. A lot of materials were therefore destroyed in the first few years after the war.”

But some materials were hidden, circulated clandestinely or sold on the black market. Phạm Thị Hoài is one of the most celebrated writers of the post- Renovation Period, whose debut novel The Crystal Messenger was a success both at home and abroad. The first edition (1988) and second edition (1995) were published by the Writers’ Association Publishing House, bar a few censored paragraphs, according to Phạm. But it was later banned by the government.

After leaving Vietnam for Germany, in 2001 she established Talawas, an online forum dedicated to reviving literary works by Vietnamese writers. She says she has been banned from travelling back to her home country since 2004, a fact she attributes to Talawas and her literary works, which have been ambiguously deemed to be “sensitive”. Her books have not been permitted to be republished in Vietnam.

“A few years ago, a friend in the publishing industry also tried to inquire about reprinting a collection of my short stories, which were entirely about love, but no publishing house accepted it,” she said.

In 2018, the government introduced a new cybersecurity law, which has made censorship worse. Critical voices that challenge the state’s version of history online are deemed to be hostile forces that are seeking to discredit the party’s revolutionary achievements.

Appreciate, don’t criticise

Censorship also makes its way into education as, in Vietnam, literature is first and foremost intended to inculcate party- defined patriotism into young minds.

According to Dr Ngọc, a high-school literature teacher in Hanoi, Vietnamese authors who are featured in school textbooks normally have very “red” (communist) backgrounds or hold party leadership positions. She added that the higher an author’s position in government, the more focus is given to their work in textbooks. “Many great writers were unfortunately not selected for the literature textbooks,” she said.

Ngọc provides tutoring for high- school students to help them prepare for their national entrance exams. These exams mostly focus on wartime hardship and heroism. Students’ responses need to show that they revere communist leaders and revile invaders. But this teaching method is not best placed to help them appreciate literature.

But ill-fated books still find their way to readers, often through the black market. Phương (not her real name) has been selling books in Hanoi for the past two decades. She says that every now and then people still look for banned books, which she collects and sells. However, these are reserved only for her closest customers.

“I would not sell sensitive books to a random buyer,” she said. “They might be disguised security agents trying to recall the book from the market.”

Index launches year-end banned books competition

It’s that time of the year again when the team at Index on Censorship brings a little light into a dark world. This year, we have delved into the mind of author Marc Nash to come up with our banned books holiday quiz. He has taken the titles of 20 books that have been banned around the world and created fiendish cryptic clues to each of the titles.

Some clues are easy but others are tougher and you might need a clue from the fake book covers we have created to go with them.

To make things more fun, we are offering five one-year subscriptions to our amazing magazine, picked from those who take part in our cunning competition.

Index on Censorship CEO Jemimah Steinfeld said, “Books are a popular present at this time of year but in many parts of the world access to them is restricted. We want people to have fun with this quiz (warning: it’s hard!) while appreciating the underlying message – that book banning is only becoming more pronounced and must be fought. After all, literature is a portal to other worlds and an essential vehicle to increase empathy and understanding. We are all the poorer when literature cannot flourish.”

To enter the competition, click here.

“There is no book so dangerous that it should not be available in a library”

This week is Banned Books Week. It should come as no surprise that the topics of censorship, banned books and cancelled authors are a regular theme of discussion at Index on Censorship. In fact we are the UK partner of the global coalition against banned books. The banning of books has repeatedly proven to be a key tool in the arsenal of tyrants and repressive regimes. Control of information and the need for one dominant narrative always leads despots to ban and even burn books. It’s been true throughout history and as much as that concerns me (and it does – a lot) – what worries me more is how pervasive the banning of books is becoming across more democratic countries and what that means for enlightened societies and their peoples.

I truly struggle to comprehend the rationale behind the banning of a specific text or author.

Words can be challenging, thought-provoking and yes, of course, they can even be hateful and inciting. But the answer, surely, is to argue back, to find different authors, to debate and win an argument – not to ban, not to cancel and definitely not to remove from the shelves of our libraries.

The editor in chief of Index, Jemimah Steinfeld, asked the team to write about their favourite banned books as part of the campaign. And as you will have seen I wrote about Judy Blume, one of my favourite authors as a child, I find it ludicrous that anyone would seek to ban books which help young people come to understand their own sexuality or their personal relationships with faith.

But I could have written about a dozen other authors whose words have shaped my worldview but yet inspired such hate and fear that others have sought to ban them. The works of George Orwell were key to helping me develop my own politics – 1984 and Animal Farm confirmed my lifelong commitment to social democratic politics and inspired my personal political campaigns against those on the extremes. Yet these works have been banned repeatedly and not just in repressive regimes but also in some US school districts, unbelievably for being pro-Communist (it really would help if people read the books before they sought to ban them…)

And as a Jewish European woman my politics are grounded, for better or worse, in understanding the horrors of the Shoah. As a student of history I, of course, believe that we must understand our history so that we aren’t destined to repeat it. So the banning of Anne Frank’s diary and the graphic novel Maus by Art Spielgelman, is completely beyond my comprehension. The crucial importance of both of these books isn’t just the subject matter – but the fact that they bring the horrors of a very dark period of our history to life in a format which is accessible to all – including young people. What is there to ban?  Unless your real goal is to rewrite Jewish and European history?

Books are the light, they drive challenge and change. They feed our minds and ensure that societies move on and develop. They educate, inform and entertain, even when they are wrong. There are books that I have considered to be of no value, books which I have considered to contain dangerous views and books which I consider to be hateful. But there is no book so dangerous that I don’t think it should be available in an academic library, available to study.

And if you believe on freedom of speech – then that’s the least you should believe too.